


we'll figure it out eventually (we don't use our words)

by azurish



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Expanded Universe, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: X-wing Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nonverbal Communication, Requited Love, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 22:39:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurish/pseuds/azurish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"<i>I love you,</i> Wedge once said with his eyes across an entire hall full of Rebel soldiers at Yavin IV.  Luke didn’t know it at that point – how could he possibly know?  He hadn’t even ever truly spoken to Luke, addressed him by any other name than “Red Five”– but Wedge found the feeling surging up in his heart regardless."</p><p>Wedge doesn't use his words well.  He just hopes that Luke understands him anyways.  Or, a relationship from start to actual-start, across four years and a distant galaxy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we'll figure it out eventually (we don't use our words)

            _I love you_ , Wedge says with his hands as he stops and just traces his fingers over Luke’s hipbones where they protrude from the orange flightsuit they’ve only half-unzipped in their haste.  He doesn’t say the words out loud – he can’t say them out loud, never has been able to – but he wants Luke to understand them by touch-telepathy alone.  His fingers ghost over pale white skin and he hopes that this feeling – the calluses of his hand delicate against Luke’s smooth skin right above his waist – will be enough for Luke to know what he is saying without speaking.  Then they’re back to frenetic motion and celebrating the fact that _they are both still alive_.

            _I love you_ , Wedge once said with his eyes across an entire hall full of Rebel soldiers at Yavin IV.  Luke didn’t know it at that point – how could he possibly know?  He hadn’t even ever truly spoken to Luke, addressed him by any other name than “Red Five”– but Wedge found the feeling surging up in his heart regardless.  There was something about seeing this boy who’d been thrust into manhood that made the feeling – soft, fierce, breathtaking – rip right through Wedge, an emotion more devastating and unavoidable than TIE fire had ever been.  Something about the way Luke looked, appropriately solemn but still bouncing on the toes of his feet – and then smiling, with the boundless joy that spilled out around the edges of Luke’s words and deeds, at that astromech of his.  There was something so innately flyboy in that – the way Luke could put aside his grief for Biggs, for the mentor whom squadron scuttlebutt said had been killed on the Death Star, for the life he had left behind, and just enjoy the moment and enjoy _being alive_.  It made Wedge smile fondly and it eased the knot he’d been carrying in his heart for ... ages, now, it must be.  Maybe even since Gus Treta blew up; certainly since he’d joined the Rebel forces.  He loved Luke, he realized, and then he almost laughed at the ridiculousness of it and pushed the feeling aside, because he was Wedge Antilles and he didn’t go falling in love with the darling hero of the day.  That was for Corellians like Han, who flirted with Rebel princesses, not for those like him.  He might be crazy enough to go around _thinking_ things like that, but Wedge was a bit too cautious and a bit too steady to act on it.

 _I love you,_ Wedge says with all the fear that’s been hounding him for months when Luke pulls him aside and tells him that it’s all right, the squadron’s not going to die on him, he doesn’t have to keep himself so distant from everyone else.  “I’m pretty sure they can handle themselves,” Luke says and he smiles, his eyes bright.  “I think you’d have more fun if you went and played Sabacc with Tycho instead of moping and pretending you don’t like him, just for instance.”  Wedge can’t quite meet Luke’s gaze.  “I just – if they’re going to die, I don’t want to –”  “Some of them might die someday, Wedge, but that’s no reason not to care now,” Luke says.  He adds, “You might die someday and I –”  and then he breaks off, but the words hang there in the air, all the clearer for their being unspoken.  “Yeah,” Wedge says.  “Yeah.”  It’s the closest either of them has ever come to any sort of verbal admission (and he hates that it has to be in this context, because if there’s one thing he’s willfully blind to everywhere except in his nightmares, it’s the fact that Luke is one of those pilots, too, and Luke could die just as easily).  Then he crumples, all the breath knocked out of him suddenly, and slides down against the cold, metal wall of the starship behind him.  “I’m just scared.”  “Don’t be,” says Luke, and he crouches down next to Wedge.  They sit there for a while, just breathing and watching each other, the edges of their flightsuits touching and the orange fabric pooling together.  Eventually, some of that Jedi calm slowly rolls through Wedge and he feels at ease once more.  “Thank you,” he says, softly.  “Any time,” Luke says, with that same impossible smile.  They stand, and Luke claps a hand over Wedge’s shoulder, easy and friendly.  “Now, I’ve heard that this ship has an excellent rec room ... what do you say we check it out?”  And Wedge laughs, the sound just a bit rough, and he follows Luke.

            _I love you_ , Wedge says with his smile as he climbs out of the X-Wing simulator and meets Luke’s eyes and they’re both exhilarated and laughing, because together they just scored the highest number of kills in the whole practice scenario.  They don’t get to fly together as wingmen often enough, but when they do, it’s so, so good.  The Corellian in him makes him want to match Luke as the other man flies the way only the Force-sensitive can.  They complement each other perfectly – Luke graceful where Wedge is blunt, Wedge a veteran where Luke is intuitive – and they fly impossibly well together.  It’s almost better when they’re just flying in the simulators, because then Wedge can watch Luke fly and enjoy it without the ever-present sense of fragile mortality nudging against his consciousness as it does when the lasers coming at them aren’t just pixels on a screen.  There are few things in the galaxy more beautiful than watching the Force-sensitive man navigate through space, his ship dancing and dodging and flitting back and forth with reflexes faster than those of any normal being.  Luke meets his eyes across the crowded room and grins and flashes him a thumbs up.  Then he turns to Wes, who’s just clambering out of his own simulator, and asks, “OK, so when are you going to admit that we always kick your ass?” and Wes flips him off and they’re all laughing and the two of them meld seamlessly back into the group.

            _I love you_ , Wedge says with his heart while he uses his words to say, coldly, “Well, look who’s made it back to base.”  Luke looks up at him from the medbay bed he’s lying in, and Wedge’s heart breaks because he’s _angry_ and he’s _upset_ and his whole world is cracking right now because Luke tore his heart out and now Luke is hurt and Wedge can’t do anything.  Luke is still and quiet and almost swallowed up by the sterile white of the medbay bed sheets.  Wedge doesn’t know what to say so he just looks down, stricken.  The image of Luke, all sadness and helpless blue eyes, still lurks like a harsh afterimage on his retinas.  There’s something he’s seen in Cloud City that he won’t talk about yet, but whatever it is, it’s hurting him more than the mechanical hand that’s still not fully disguised by skin grafts.  “Didn’t think you were ever going to come back after Hoth,” he says, but he mumbles it and it wasn’t what he’d planned.  He’d had a whole speech that he’d been practicing and he’d gotten out the first sentence already but now he can’t remember the rest.  “Thought you’d died.  Then I thought you’d left us.”  He’s still not looking up.  “Force, Luke, you can’t just –”  He pauses, makes the mistake of looking up, and there’s still pain and incomprehension in those eyes and now it’s getting worse and it’s getting worse because of him and _he’s hurting Luke_.  Luke’s in pain – physically, mentally, emotionally – and whatever Wedge is doing is making it worse.  He wants to be sick.  But he hurts so much, too ...  It’s ridiculous, because what claim does he have to Luke at all?  They’d fooled around a few times before and Wedge had pressed his love into Luke’s skin, but he’d never said it aloud, because Wedge speaks with his actions, and apparently Luke never understood him.  It’s not Luke’s fault that Wedge had been stupid enough to go and fall in love with a _Jedi_ and Luke owes him nothing.  It’s not fair for Wedge to make him guilty now – but it’s not fair for Luke to make him _care_ so much and Wedge hurts down to his very core.  “You should’ve told me you were going to Dagobah,” he says, and then he can’t say anything more so he just leaves.  The medbay door swishes closed automatically behind him.  Wedge leans against the cool metal and he doesn’t feel any better at all and it really just isn’t fair.

            _I love you_ , Wedge had said with all the hope he could still muster up in his heart while he and Luke talked over the logistics of forming Rogue Group.  Luke was still saying something about an old mission where he thought that having a sub-group that the two of them alone commanded would have been useful, but Wedge was kind of tuning him out right then and just smiling.  This was – this was how everything should be.  Him.  Luke.  Flying together, commanding together.  He knew in his bones that this was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.  It was simple and effective and wonderful and Wedge already loved it, Wedge could already imagine countless missions to come and he couldn’t believe he was this lucky.  Luke gestured to a holographic set of maps he’d pulled up and Wedge tried to make himself pay attention again, but it was hard when most of his focus was going towards not smiling like an idiot.  For all that they were putting him in charge of things now, he was still just _Wedge Antilles_ , and he couldn’t help it when he felt ridiculous emotions far too strongly.

            _I love you_ , Wedge says with his tongue but his mouth is sealed tight against Luke’s mouth so no words come out.  There’s just hot suction and the press of Luke’s hands against his back.  They separate and Luke trails a hand down Wedge’s face.  He’s gentle all of a sudden and Wedge doesn’t know why.  It’s nice, though, and Wedge leans into it.  “Hey,” Luke says, his voice soft, hushed in the space in between them.  “It’s all OK, Wedge.  We survived.”  And they had survived the mission today (Luke wouldn’t have, if Wedge hadn’t shot down the two TIEs that had converged on him from the squadron that had been waiting when they’d dropped out of hyperspace) and they’re OK now.  Wedge just has to make himself believe that.  So he pulls Luke in again without saying anything and molds himself against the other man so that there isn’t any space between them, so that everything is just Luke-and-Wedge and he can feel Luke’s heartbeat through his skin and hear his harsh breaths every time they break apart to gasp for air and taste how warm and _alive_ he is.

            _I love you_ , Wedge had said with the snap of his hips and with the way his fingers fisted in the scratchy, regulation-white sheets when they had fallen into bed together for the first time.  He had realized right then and there, with a ridiculous, exhilarated little smile, that he’d never gotten over that first unexpected surge of feelings way back on Yavin IV, no matter how much he’d tried to pretend he had, and now he was having sex with _Luke Skywalker_ and this was one of those things he’d never thought would happen to him.  He tried to engrave the moment into his memory – the warm press of Luke’s body against his, almost exactly as tall (short) as he was (OK, there were definitely things to be said about fucking other pilots, because starfighter pilots came in certain body types and the two of them fit together just perfectly), skin-on-skin and fingers digging into his biceps and hips rutting against each other – and then he couldn’t think anymore because everything was so _overwhelming_.  Sex with Luke was unlike anything Wedge had ever done before, because Luke applied himself with the same simple, fierce intensity that he brought to everything else and Wedge felt almost pinned to the bed, unable to look away.  He was drowning in Luke.  He closed his eyes, because it might be easier if he couldn’t see those blue eyes above him, but now it was almost worse (better?), because he could feel everything so acutely.  A shudder ripped through him.  His whole word narrowed down to the places where Luke’s body was undulating against his and the places where his hand, spit-slick, held them together, the friction almost unbearable.  It was _too much_ and it wasn’t enough.  He almost sobbed, hot need curling up through his body and making it hard to breathe, and Luke answered him with ragged breaths and a choked-off noise.  Then Luke angled his body just so, and Wedge curled his fingers tighter around them, and there were stars exploding behind Wedge’s eyes.  He was floating for a while, the world in hyper-saturated colors and hyper-sensitive textures, before he finally settled back down into himself.  It had been fast and hard and maybe a little desperate, but there had also been also something kind there (and maybe that was Luke spilling around the edges again), something that Wedge’s heart held onto even as his mind went blank, something that settled the need _there_ as well.  It was the kind of feeling that said there might be a second time and Wedge was so, so OK with that.

            _I love you_ , Wedge says with the press of his forehead against Luke’s shoulder in the dark.  Luke is carding his hands through Wedge’s hair and Wedge just feels ... safe.  “You’re all right, Wedge.  I’ve got you.”  If Wedge closes his eyes, he can still picture the interior of the hovertrain and feel the bands cutting into his wrists.  He was so close to being lost to them forever, sent away to prison on Kessel and who knew what would have happened there?  But Luke and the squadron came for him and he’s OK now.  Luke’s hands in his hair are making him drowsy, but they’re also grounding him in the moment, so his mind stays in the warm, dark room and the Rebel starship they’re in now and doesn’t drift away to Kessel and the Empire again.  He listens to Luke’s even breathing and eventually he falls asleep.

            _I love you_ , Wedge says with his fingers as he taps out bursts of laser-fire from his ship and blows up his second Death Star.  He almost whispers it aloud this time – but there’s a chance the comm. is still on and he doesn’t want to risk that.  Instead he smiles, hard and fierce, at the sensor panels in the cockpit of his X-Wing.  He knows deep in his soul that Luke must have escaped the giant, menacing battlestation, because he knows that he would feel it – through that Force of Luke’s, perhaps, or just through some sixth sense he always has around Luke – if anything happened to his Jedi.  So instead he can just allow himself to rejoice, because they’ve done it, he and Luke and everyone else, they’ve blown up another Death Star, and they’re thwarting the kind of evil that only the Empire can aspire to, and _they are winning_.

            _I love you_ , Wedge says through the embrace as he holds Luke while Luke sobs.  He could tell from the way Luke held himself and the look in Luke’s eyes after he’d come down from the Death Star – just ever so brittle and guarded – that something awful had happened.  “He was my father,” Luke said, and he chokes the words out and Wedge doesn’t understand yet (he won’t understand until he and Luke talk it over properly in the days to come, and then he’ll share his own stories and they’ll heal themselves the only way they know how), but Wedge just holds him, runs a tentative hand through his blond hair.  “It’ll be all right, Luke,” he says instead, and he smoothes Luke’s sweaty hair back from his forehead.  The night air on Endor is sticky and smoky and sweet.  Wedge wishes he could take some of the calm and the cheer around them and impress it into Luke’s bones, give the youth everyone sees as a man some peace to hold onto forever.

            _I love you_ , Wedge says when he wakes up, floating in bacta, after Luke saves his life yet again.  He remembers the intense pain in his hand as he held open the self-destruct mechanism of the Imperial message droid he’d accidentally triggered, and he remembers knowing that he was going to die there, floating in space, in so much pain, with fire coursing up his arm from his fingers and the knowledge that at least he was saving the fleet from the explosion.  And then Luke had shown up and he’d poured himself into Wedge’s mind and helped ease the pain and coordinated with Wedge to destroy the droid with his shimmering lightsaber and his command of the Force.  When he closes his eyes he can almost imagine himself back out there in the vast, cold ocean of space, alone and helpless and hurting _so much_.  He can feel the onset of panic because this is not how he wants to die, out of his ship and by himself in the vacuum, but this _is_ how he is going to die, apparently, and he rages in his mind and he _hurts_.  But then Luke shows up, so unexpected and so goddamn welcome, and he’s saving Wedge, he’s saving them all, he and Wedge are working together to destroy the droid.  And he opens his eyes again in the bacta tank and he’s going to be all right.

            _I love you_ , Wedge had wanted to say when they spent their last night together before Luke headed off to – to go be a Jedi or whatever it was Luke needed to do.  He wasn’t sure what saying it would have accomplished, but perhaps ... perhaps Luke might have stayed.  He shrugs, now, when he turns over the memory in his mind, by himself in his empty room.  Luke was going to leave anyways.  If Luke hadn’t known he loved him at that point – if Luke hadn’t known he loved him when they went back to the same room together nine nights out of ten and they flew perfectly as a pair and they knew each others’ pasts better than any other person alive and Luke had held him while he talked about his parents and he had held Luke while Luke cried about his and – well.  If Luke didn’t know it, he wasn’t the man Wedge had thought he was.  He had known it, and he’d left anyways, and now it was time for Wedge to _get over it_ and run the best starfighter squadron in the universe and help destroy the Imperial Remnant.  Saying it out loud wouldn’t have changed anything; Wedge has been saying it for the last four years in the way that he says _anything_ that matters.  Luke must have known and Luke left and Wedge needs to learn to smooth away the bitterness that snarls in his chest when he thinks that.

            _I love you,_ Luke says.  He says it with his mind, only it spills over effortlessly into Wedge’s head, carrying with it a hint of the flurry of emotions that express years of care and shared joy and pain and loyalty.  Wedge’s hands stutter where they’re running a rag along the edge of his X-Wing’s s-foils because Luke is here on the ship and because Luke is here with him and because Luke just said – Luke just said ...  He turns, his face still open, shocked (he’s never been any good at hiding what was always there to see), and Luke is beaming at him.  The smile is tempered, though, with a certain calm and balance that Wedge had only ever sensed traces of before.  There’s no chance that this man let the thought slip out accidentally: one look is enough for Wedge to tell that Luke has honed his control of those Jedi mind powers and that message was entirely intentional.  Luke’s fingers idly drum against the lightsaber hilt on his hip and Wedge knows – Wedge just _knows_ – that Luke has settled what he needed to settle and he’s on his way to being a Jedi Grandmaster or whatever it is he’s going to be and he’s happy now.  It’s that same infectious grin he had back on Yavin IV, but his eyes are much calmer and older.  Wedge puts the rag down slowly, just leaving it there on top of the metal, and he jumps down from the block he’s been standing on to reach the top of his starfighter’s wings.  “I, uh,” he starts, and then he stops, frustrated, and looks at Luke.  Really, this shouldn’t be so hard to say, not with Luke standing before him all golden hair and blue eyes and that selfsame smile.  “I love you, too,” he tries.  It’s suddenly very simple, now that he’s said it aloud, and he grins.  He’s never going to be very good at this whole “talking about your feelings” thing, but when it comes down to it, he’s willing to do whatever it takes for this to work.  “Yeah, I figured as much,” Luke said.  Wedge laughs and then Luke moves forward and pins him back against the body of his starship and kisses him senseless.  When they break apart for air, Wedge is still smiling with triumph, because he can feel the edges of Luke’s mind against his, and he knows, now, that for all that time when Wedge was saying “I love you” with the rocking of his body and the brush of his fingertips and the smile on his face, Luke had been doing the exact same thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by the lovey on-a-peregrine over on tumblr. Thank you again! <3  
> (And, uh, if you're not an EU reader - the things with the droid and with Kessel and with forming Rogue Group are all sort of real things! WEDGE. LUKE.)  
> And finally, reviews make me a really happy writer and likely to write more in this universe, probably? ;D


End file.
